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On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

laurasanders.net

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Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#61

Post by nmcfarl »

rickmb wrote: post #35
Toshio wrote: post #11

Randi Harper a.k.a. FreeBSD Girl was interviewed for the FLOSS Weekly podcast and she said that every minute spent on discussing gender issues in technology is a wasted minute that should be better spent building free software.

And if people in every field and every community felt that way gender issues would never get discussed, let alone dealt with. Unless you truly believe that there are no issues, this attitude is just intellectual laziness. Whether it comes from a woman or not is irrelevant.

I'm thinking she means what dfxm12 is saying in his reply: Do, Lead, Build something, and Make a statement with the thing you build.

Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#62

Post by panda_person »

jenandre wrote: post #50

Ehh... Yeah. The original article was kind of a pile of crap, but it's hard to give this any credibility either. 1) She's only worked for 6 months 2) She works in UX, which is actually pretty well represented by women. My two cents from a woman who actually works in a technical position (I'm a developer) for > 10 years now. Also working in infosec, which is one of the least represented when it comes to gender balance…

I agree totally with what you say. She really doesn't have the experience in age or diversity of tech career fields to base her opinion.

Women are underrepresented in tech, and that is a big problem. Just look at college CS classes, hackerspaces, meetup groups for various programming languages, etc. I think that in a lot of bigger companies, there are institutional pressures to keep this stuff on the downlow, but are more prevalent in startups.

Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#63

Post by rada »

an_actual_man wrote: post #57
bane wrote: post #31

There is certainly sexism in the tech industry. It's not terribly common or widespread, but it's there. But the tech industry is also famously self-selective. Many people in the industry self-selected for it when they were pre-teens. Spending hours upon hours programming in BASIC or whatever on their C64s or TRS-80s before they were out of elementary school...before thoughts of sexism enter the consciousness. There i…

Care to provide an example of sexism to back-up your rant?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4644860

Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#64

Post by panda_person »

an_actual_man wrote: post #57
bane wrote: post #31

There is certainly sexism in the tech industry. It's not terribly common or widespread, but it's there. But the tech industry is also famously self-selective. Many people in the industry self-selected for it when they were pre-teens. Spending hours upon hours programming in BASIC or whatever on their C64s or TRS-80s before they were out of elementary school...before thoughts of sexism enter the consciousness. There i…

Care to provide an example of sexism to back-up your rant?

Here's an example from my own experience: There's a significant number of trans women who work in tech. And almost all of them started transitioning as adults, in their 20s and 30s. So, they had the "benefit" of male socialization growing up, and being encouraged more to dabble in computers/tech/engineering. Much fewer trans men (and non trans women) in tech, it seems.

Also, the number of women historically majoring in CS dropped off significantly in the 1980s, when 1. Video gaming culture started to take off and 2. Hardware (something seen as more masculine) started to be emphasized more often. Like, programming historically was something women with math and CS degrees did, then I think there was a greater influence of hardware and tinkering with your hands that was part of being in tech. Stuff that is traditionally seen as more masculine.

Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#65

Post by youngtaff »

zachinglis wrote: post #8
seraph787 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a male feminist. I wouldn't even up vote this. She does point out why the article is stupid but I think most people would agree on that point already.

You'd be surprised. A lot of people took the original post as gospel. Some because if they didn't, they'd be labelled against women. (It's a sort-of mob mentality.)

The original article in .net mag was really difficult to read, I gave up part way through.

After reading Laura's post I went back to it but no still gave up part way through.

The original author was on a hiding to nothing as I think it's really difficult for guys to well write about sexism

Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#66

Post by theorique »

tesmar2 wrote: post #59
mdkess wrote: post #32

Sexism that I've noticed has been very subtle. I work with some very intelligent people, so I can't imagine anyone is overtly sexist (ie. thinking that women can't do this job, would not hire a person simply based on gender etc.), but still, there are problems. It's hard to write about sexism as a guy without feeling like you're coming off as sexist, but hey, I probably am. Also, it's hard to write about things witho…

> (being married makes this a little bit less awkward for me) I would think that it would make it MORE awkward for you to ask a female colleague to go out.

The idea is that they know it's business, not personal. There's no potential hidden agenda about trying to bang your co-worker that there might be if you were single.

Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#67

Post by sarah2079 »

mdkess wrote: post #32

Sexism that I've noticed has been very subtle. I work with some very intelligent people, so I can't imagine anyone is overtly sexist (ie. thinking that women can't do this job, would not hire a person simply based on gender etc.), but still, there are problems. It's hard to write about sexism as a guy without feeling like you're coming off as sexist, but hey, I probably am. Also, it's hard to write about things witho…

I really like your point about how men are more likely to be reluctant to grab a casual drink (or even one-on-one lunch, I would say) with women to talk about work because they are worried it will be seen as "flirty." Based on my experience this can have a really big impact, but I don't see it discussed very often.

Being able to have easy, casual friendships and one-on-one conversations with your coworkers can be extremely important to knowing what is going on and what you should be doing to succeed. Like you said, there are opportunities that come up in these meetings that you just don't get otherwise.

I don't think this is even a conscious decision to avoid seeming flirty a lot of the time, wanting to do things outside of work with same-gender colleagues might just feel more natural. This can make it easy to miss the fact that women are being left out, and I think a lot of men don't even realize what a disadvantage this can be.

Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#68

Post by white_young_man »

shakesbeard wrote: post #23

I'm a young, white male, aka privileged person. I've read quite a lot about feminism (and anti-racism for that matter), and struggled to get a clear picture of when my actions are appreciated. I think the most important lesson I've learned is that I must listen; because I do not have any first hand experience.

I'm a young, white man too. Care to tell me how this makes me a privileged person?

Re: On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

#69

Post by desireco42 »

I would say that sexism in IT is not the major issue, there will always be places where there might be some, but I frankly never encountered those and women were treated well in all the places. Point that @mdkess makes about when female dev is bad it kind of is more visible and projects more to others is also good. I worked with some exceptional girls that code like best of us. However some other roles in IT might be better for women to start, like BA and QA and project management where frankly they excel.

What IT or tech industry could use more is professionalism which would also help with work/life balance. I think that would bring up pay which I consider low, even though it is better then other fields. It would benefit from more women entering the field, but how to attract them is tough problem to solve.

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